This invention relates to an apparatus and system for simulating the appearance of a variety of custom wheels on land vehicles.
The overall appearance and performance of any land vehicle can be greatly influenced by the wheels that are used with it. The wheels even arguably may have a greater impact on the appearance of a vehicle than any other single factor. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is an enormous demand for custom wheels for all sorts of vehicles, from light cars and trucks to heavy trucks and trailers of all kinds. For example, it is not unusual for an automobile enthusiast to purchase custom wheels for his or her car after growing fired of the original wheels that came with the car when it was purchased. It also is not unusual for a car lover to purchase more than one set of wheels for his or her car.
Wheel manufacturers long ago recognized the demand for custom wheels, and there exist today many, many manufacturers of after-market custom wheels. Most of these manufacturers produce a wide variety of wheels, with each wheel having a unique appearance. A trip to any retail wheel and tire dealer will illustrate the vast variety of wheel styles that are available for any given vehicle. The result of this manufacturing variety is that consumers have literally hundreds of wheel styles to choose from when making a wheel-buying decision.
But if the great selection of wheels that are available to consumers results in ample consumer choices, it also causes problems for both the consumer and the wheel dealer. For the consumer, a major issue is how a particular wheel style will look on his or her car. Most consumers that purchase custom after-market wheels make their purchasing decision based in large part on the way that the wheels look on their car. The selection of a wheel is a very personal process. And like most consumer decisions of this nature, beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. The subjective nature of the process is of course is part of the reason why wheel suppliers manufacture such a wide variety of wheel stylesxe2x80x94different consumers prefer wheels of different styles. But it is very difficult for a consumer to visualize how his or her car will appear based on looking at a wheel hung on the wall of a tire and wheel dealer""s showroom. It is no less difficult to visualize the appearance of the consumer""s car with new wheels when the wheel is positioned next to the consumer""s car.
Since wheel preference is a very subjective matter, the only really effective manner in which to visualize how a car will look with new wheels is to xe2x80x9ctry them on.xe2x80x9d This is akin, in a sense, to a consumer trying on a new suit. The consumer can""t really know how he or she will look in the new suit until he or she puts it on.
But trying a wheel on a car to see how it will look is far different from trying on a new suit to see how it will look, and it is not an activity that most wheel dealers are willing to entertain. Indeed, wheel dealers are reluctant, at best, to even consider lefting a consumer mount a set of wheels on his or her car just to see how they look. The reasons are plain enough. The dealer would need to mount tires on the wheels, put the car on a hoist, remove the existing wheels and mount the new wheels, then put the car back on the ground. All of this would be done in the hope that the sometimes-fickle consumer likes the way the car looks. Not only does this require a substantial amount of employee time to mount the wheels, etc., but also mounting tires on custom wheels is not always an easy activity. Indeed, great skill and care are necessary to make sure that the wheels, and the tires that are mounted on them, are not damaged in the process. Wheel dealers are understandably disinclined to undertake such a process just to demonstrate how a car might look. They are, nonetheless, very familiar with the consumer""s desire to see how a particular wheel looks on the car.
Given these limitations it is not surprising that wheel retailers do not customarily put wheels on a customer""s car without selling the wheels first. The customer is thus left with a dilemma: the consumer must pick a style of wheel before a tire is mounted on the wheel, and before the wheel is installed on the consumer""s car. Unless the consumer is absolutely confident that he or she will happy with the way that the wheels look on the car, the wheel selection decision is fraught with uncertainty and can thus be very difficult. The difficulty is only compounded by the fact that custom after-market wheels are generally a significant expense, and can even cost thousands of dollars.
There are various solutions that help mitigate these problems, but none that solve them. For instance, recognizing that consumer""s like to see the appearance of a wheel on a car, some wheel manufacturers provide photographs of various makes of automobiles fitted with various styles of wheels. These photographs typically give a representative picture of how the particular wheels look on the car shown in the photograph. But unless the car shown in the photograph is the same make and the same color as the consumer""s car, such photographs are a poor representation of the way that the consumer""s car will look with those wheels. And as noted above, whether a wheel makes a consumer""s car look the way the consumer wants is a very personal and subjective decision. Even if the car in a photograph were of the identical color and make as the consumer""s car, the actual three-dimensional appearance of the consumer""s car might be very different from the way it looks in a photograph. Indeed, in most instances the photographs supplied by wheel manufacturers are high quality professional shots. The way that a car looks in such photographs is likely very different from the way that the same car looks in a parking lot.
The World Wide Web has spawned another approach, albeit similar to the photographs just discussed. At the web site located at www.tirerack.com it is possible to view on a computer monitor the way that a selected make of car will appear with a selected style of wheel. More specifically, with the proper computer tools the online user of the web site may select a particular make and model of a car, and a particular car color from a drop-down list. An image of that car in the selected color appears on the screen with a corresponding set of images of custom wheels that are available for that car. The user then selects a particular wheel from the set of available wheels, and the image of the car then is regenerated with the selected wheels. This allows the viewer to see those wheels represented on the selected car. The user can browse through the wheels that are available for that particular car, and can print out the image of the car with the selected wheels.
While this online system allows a viewer to select a variety of car colors, and even to view a selected variety of wheels on the car, it suffers from the same basic problems as a simple photograph: it does not provide a three dimensional view of the user""s car with the desired wheel. Again, stock images of cars represented on a two-dimensional computer monitor look very different from the way that the same car looks in the consumer""s driveway, even if the color of the vehicle is the same.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system that allows consumers to visualize a realistic representation of custom wheels, as those wheels would appear on the consumer""s car, as opposed to an image of a car. Such a system provides substantial benefits to the consumer and makes the purchasing decision much easier. And such a system is of great benefit to wheel manufacturers and to wheel dealers alike. With such a system manufacturers can allow consumers to xe2x80x9csamplexe2x80x9d all of the different wheel styles from a particular supplier. The dealer is able to show the consumer a realistic view of how that customer""s car will look, without having to mount and dismount tires. In short, such a system is an effective sales tool at each point in the sales chain.
The present invention provides such a system. In one embodiment the invention uses high quality, full size graphic reproductions of actual wheel and tire combinations on a disc. Mobile stands hold a plurality of the discs, and each disc has a graphic reproduction of a wheel of a different style on each side. With a selected wheel disc in place on the mobile stand, the wheel disc is place next to the consumer""s car such that the disc is positioned adjacent the car""s actual wheel. The consumer may then view the selected wheel, as it would actually look on that consumer""s car, and from any angle relative to the car. The disc system also functions as a point of purchase display for a selection of wheels in the tire dealer""s showroom. In another embodiment tire rings that are graphic representations of actual tires are supplied with separable wheel discs, which are graphic representations of actual wheels. Each tire ring has an internal opening into which a wheel disc fits. The tire rings are supplied in a variety of outside diameters to match most commercial tire sizes; the size of the internal opening is constant. With this system the consumer selects a tire ring that matches the size tire that is mounted to his or her car. The tire ring is then xe2x80x9cmountedxe2x80x9d to the car""s tire such that the tire ring lies adjacent the actual tire. The consumer then selects a wheel disc from a plurality of different discs and the selected disc is connected to the tire ring in the internal opening.